Tabula Rasa

I used to wake, eager to tell her my dreams, to hear her voice, the way it always felt like coming home. Instead I wake, disoriented, in an unfamiliar room, clutching for my phone to make some sense of these surroundings. The glowing numbers on the screen seem like a foreign language I can't decipher, AM or PM? The room is dark. It must be night, I decide. I press the heels of my hands hard into my eyes, trying to rub some of the fogginess away. My fingers smell like cigarettes and beneath that, something else, something unpleasant but indiscernible. The inside of my mouth and throat feel coated in a thick acrid dust, I swallow with difficulty, my tongue rough and sandpaper-y. 

As I try to stand, I feel the true extent of whatever damage I've done to myself. Everything aches, I press my fingers gently to my legs trying to knead out the cramping muscles. Even my skin hurts. Another attempt at standing and my legs wobble, my head swims. I feel like a fawn, newly born, attempting to walk for the first time in a world that is already too frightening to exist in. The pain seems disproportionate, I check myself for obvious injuries, for bruises. I search for a memory. 

In pursuit of water, I slink through darkened halls on shaky legs. Outside, the sun begins its slow ascent from behind the desert mountains. It is beautiful. The dichotomy makes me want to cry. In the kitchen, I find him, hunched over the table, kit open nearby, and I don't know if I'm relieved or furious. 

Where are we?
A friend's.
What happened?
Nothing.
Nothing?
Nothing. 

I exist in a state of nebulous grief, mind still murky from intoxicants, wandering about my house like a ghost. My nose is raw and bloody so I swallow the pills instead, curl under my heated blanket listening to classical piano music and the hum of trains in the distance.

There is a sense that time has stood still. I exist now in a place outside of the confines of clocks. Everything is being erased and I let it happen, my soul now just the tiniest flicker in a body anesthetized as things are done to it. The light is waning. I welcome the dark.